Transcription
[Music]
Wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate wherein man fell? The sinfulness of that estate wherein man fell consists in the guilt of Adam's first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin, together with all actual transgressions that proceeded from it.
In a previous question, we asked whether we sinned because we are sinners or whether we are sinners because we sin. We noted that, in the first instance, we sin because we are already sinners. In other words, all of our specific sins—such as disrespecting or breaking the Lord's Day, dishonoring our parents, lying, or whatever—actually come from or flow from the fact that we are born as sinners. We are born with a sinful nature, so we can trace our specific sins back to the source of our sinful nature, and then we can trace that back to Adam's first sin.
We talked about a big theological word, which is important for children to understand: the word "imputation." Imputation refers to legally crediting something to the account of someone else, reckoning them as such. We noticed that there are three ways in which imputation works its way out in Scripture. First, there is the imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity. Then we come to Christ, our Savior, and we see that the sin of God's elect people is imputed to Him. He who knew no sin was made sin so that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Christ's righteousness is, in exchange, imputed or credited to the account of the elect.
This is an important concept that the Bible gives us. As we go on to the next category, it asks about the sinfulness of that estate in which man fell, and we are going to trace out some of the implications here.
Think of a tree. Here's a tree, and that tree has all sorts of fruit on it. It's fall, and there are apples, peaches, pears, cherries—whatever you have—there's all this fruit that comes out on the tree. But underneath, we have things that we can't see. There are roots going down into the ground, and all these roots spread out all over the place underneath the ground. You look at the tree, you see the tree, you see the fruit, but you can't see the roots that go way down into the ground. Yet there's a connection: these roots are what feed the tree and enable it to produce fruit. Water comes down, and there are nutrients in the soil, and all of those go up the tree and are used as nutrients to help it produce fruit.
You can think of our actual sins—the actual sins that we do every day—as the fruit. For example, being mean to your brother or sister, not picking up your toys, or whatever it is. These actual sins occur every time we break God's law. Underneath all of this, as I was explaining a minute ago, is what we call original sin. We are tracing things back to Adam's first sin, and this is what feeds, if you will, the source of our actual sins.
You can look, for example, at Mark 7:21, which talks about this connection. Let me illustrate this for you: Why do we die? The answer is because of sin. We die because we are sinners. There was no death in Eden prior to Adam's first sin. As a result of his sin, death comes into the world, and people die because they are sinners.
Think about this for a second: you have little babies. They are beautiful and small, and they are not able to run around and break toys. They are not able to talk and say no to their parents or be disrespectful. Yet babies still die; they even die in the womb, and they die sometimes outside of the womb. How is that possible? If you understand the connection between sin and death, then you can answer the question: babies are sinners. Babies do have a sinful nature, and as sinners, they are capable of dying.
You can see how these things are connected. Now, the question here is especially emphasizing the sinfulness of sin. We are told three things about the sinfulness of sin. First of all, the guilt—the guilt of Adam's first sin. This is part of the sinfulness of sin, and I should explain. We see this in Romans 5, as we've already alluded to. When I say "guilt," let's be sure we're clear on this. Sometimes we do something wrong, and we get this feeling inside of us; it's our conscience telling us we did something wrong. Sometimes we describe that as feeling guilty.
But when we talk about the guilt of Adam's first sin, we're not talking about that feeling we get inside of us when we've done something wrong. That's not the way the word "guilt" is being used here. That would be a subjective use of the word "guilt," which is perfectly fine, but it's not what's intended here. There's also a different kind of guilt, if you will—an objective guilt. That's referring to the fact that there's a clear record that we've broken the law.
Let's say you have a person who has committed a crime, and they're caught and brought before a judge. There are witnesses and clear, unequivocal testimony that they've actually committed this crime. The judge is going to stand up at the end of the trial and say, "I have to now give my verdict." He will hit his gavel on the desk and say, "I hereby declare you guilty."
Now, what the judge is saying is not, "I declare that you feel guilty about something." Maybe the criminal does; maybe he doesn't. Maybe he doesn't feel remorse over what he's done. The judge, when he says, "I declare you guilty," is saying, "I judge that you have indeed broken the law. Here's the law; you've broken it."
So when we talk about the guilt of Adam's first sin, that's what we're referring to: God's verdict that we have broken the law. There's objective proof that we have transgressed God's commandments.
The second thing mentioned is the lack of original righteousness. You'll see this in Romans 3, verse 10. Whereas man was created good, upright, and holy, and he had righteousness and was sinless, now he lacks that. This shows the sinfulness of sin; he is lacking that original righteousness.
Thirdly, we see the corruption of man's whole nature. Just as we have testimony that we've broken God's law, which is outside of us, there is also within us a corruption, a pollution, a defilement of our whole nature. Every part of our soul—the way we feel, the way we think, the things we do, the things we love, our conscience—all of that, plus everything in our bodies, right? Our bodies end up being members of unrighteousness. Paul says we use our eyes, ears, mouth, hands, and feet in ways that are sinful.
So we are stained with sin. Everything about us, inside and out, as a result of Adam's first sin, is stained, polluted, and dirty. As a result of that sin, every part of us is corrupt. This highlights one of the aspects of the sinfulness of this state.
So there's the guilt, the lack of original holiness—it's not there anymore—and, on the flip side, the corruption of our whole nature. As I said, it's both inside and outside. We have an inherent sinfulness about us; everything that we do is tainted by sin.
This is also a good place to bring up what we call total depravity. We'll come back to this later on, but total depravity is often presented as part of the doctrines of grace or the five points of Calvinism. Those five points are often presented as an acrostic, where you have "TULIP," and each letter stands for one of the five points. The first one, the "T" in TULIP, is total depravity.
When we say total depravity, we mean that our whole nature is corrupt. We're not saying that man is as bad as he possibly could be, that every individual is as bad as they possibly could be. No, they could be even more evil and more sinful. But when we say "total," we mean every aspect of us. Every part of us is depraved or sinful, affected by sin.
As I said, our understanding, our will, our affections, our conscience, our memory, our bodies, and so on—they're all affected by sin. The Lord tells us in many places, but Romans 3 would be a good example, that there are none that are righteous, no, not one; that there are none that seek after God; that there are none that do good. Man, left to himself, without God's grace, without Christ and the gospel, cannot do anything but sin. His whole nature is corrupt.
You might say, "Well, what about when an unbeliever helps an old lady across the street?" That's a form of civil goodness, right? But the fact is, it's not done to the glory of God. It's not done out of sincere love for God. It's not done in pursuit of honoring the Lord. Even those things that have the appearance of civil good are not deemed righteous or as acts of true goodness before the Lord. The only way that a man is able to do what pleases the Lord is by His grace.
We saw in a previous question, you'll remember those four categories: before the fall, after the fall, after conversion, and then in heaven. Man is not able to not sin, left to himself, whereas the Christian is able both to sin and to not sin by God's grace.
So here in question 18, it says: "Wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate wherein man fell? The sinfulness of that estate wherein man fell consists in the guilt of Adam's first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin, together with all actual transgressions that proceeded from it."
[Applause]